


The Rules

by lafolleconnasse



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Getting Together, Light Angst, Romance, Shikamaru-centric chapter 2, Slow Burn, Temari-centric chapter 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24407788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafolleconnasse/pseuds/lafolleconnasse
Summary: This wasn’t how their game was played. The game that the two of them had been playing for who knows how many years, the game that the two of them liked to pretend didn’t exist, but they both knew had clear and well-established rules.
Relationships: Nara Shikamaru/Temari
Comments: 16
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quick disclaimer: this story exists within the Naruto universe but I only used the broad themes of the canon as a vehicle for character study. Hope you enjoy!

He wasn’t waiting at the gate when she arrived.

This was, in fact, unusual, as through the years she had been serving as ambassador, despite all of his complaining he had never missed a chance to see her if he knew she was coming to Konoha.

Temari frowned, squinting in the late afternoon sun of the early spring. This wasn’t how their game was played. The game that the two of them had been playing for who knows how many years, the game that the two of them liked to pretend didn’t exist, but they both knew had clear and well-established rules.

He picks her up at the gate. They banter. She would insult him outright. He would insult her more sneakily. They would smile at each other and go eat at her favorite restaurant in Konoha. Some nosy waitress or acquaintance would inevitably ask them if they were on a date. They would act annoyed and deny it, but she’s seen the way he looks at her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention.

Temari’s not an idiot—she’s a grown woman with needs and desires, and has been trained from adolescence to weaponize her own sexuality if she needs to. She knows what desire looks like, and she likes to think that she knows how to use it to her benefit to get what she wants. She likes to think that _if_ she wanted to, she could get Shikamaru to break the rules. But she never is quite so bold, and he never acts on it, it being the invisible sexual tension between them that is so strong it gets pointed out by their friends and even by damn strangers every time they’re seen together.

The rules are: he never acts on it, and he walks her to her apartment, and she invites him inside for tea and a game. They play shogi, and he beats her, but she always makes it difficult and puts up a good fight.

This is Temari’s favorite part of the evening; the two of them sitting cross-legged on the floor, relaxed, the comforting aroma of the tea steaming at their sides. He usually takes his uniform vest off when they play, and while he’s concentrating on the game, she allows herself the pleasure of admiring the lines of his body. The ridiculous hair, the point of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the slope of his neck. The broad lines of his wide shoulders she particularly likes; Time had been good to him there. His big hands and slender fingers with short clean nails catching her eye as they out to move pieces on the board. She pretends to be annoyed when he looks her in the eye when she’s realizes that she’s lost, what used to be a smug expression on his handsome face has transformed over these sessions into a real smile: soft, sincere. For her. He likes to win, but more than that she suspects he likes to spend this time with her. When he stands to leave, she usually remains seated. They exchange the usual snarky pleasantries and he walks out the door, she says he’ll see her at the next day’s diplomatic meetings.

The last time they performed this little ritual, the night before she was to return to Suna, he surprised her when he picked up their two teacups and brought them to the sink in her small kitchen. From her seat on the floor, next to the board displaying her most recent defeat, Temari made an impulsive decision. This was the first time he had deviated from the rules, and she found it alarmingly thrilling. As she listened to the clinking sounds of him washing the teacups and placing them down to dry, she reached up and pulled the ties out of her hair, shaking out her blond waves. When he emerged from the kitchen, she was gratified by the brief but obvious expression of surprise that flashed across his face, before he visibly schooled himself into his usual blank expression.

“What? You’ve never seen a woman with her hair down before?” She asked, wincing internally as what she was aiming to be teasing words came out a little more aggressive than she had intended.

Shikamaru’s mouth tugged into a smirk. _Snark was familiar territory_ ; he must have thought. _Safe ground_. “If this is some kind of distraction maneuver, Temari, I will remind you that you already lost the game,” he taunted, making his way towards the door.

Taken off guard by the lack of reaction to her obvious deviation from the rules, Temari abandoned the playful tone and intuitively reverted to her habitual way of speaking with him: insults.

“Idiot! You just took too long getting out of my space that I couldn’t take it anymore! Your presence always gives me a headache,” she called after him, blindly grabbing at the nearby game pieces. Shikamaru’s eyes widened as he sensed the oncoming violence, and he managed to slip through the door as Temari hurled the pieces towards his retreating form with full shinobi strength.

The pieces embedded in the door as it closed, but she could not hear his footsteps. There was a long pause. _Was he going to come back inside_? She waited quietly, and then heard the sound of Shikamaru’s lazy shuffle move down the hallway. Temari looked down at the floor. _You idiot,_ she thought. _You took a risk and you fell flat on your face._ Eyes sliding shut, she tilted her face up towards the ceiling, drawing in a labored breath. _Will things go back to the way they were?_

* * *

That was two months ago. At present, Temari was standing at the Konoha gate in the light of the green spring day, becoming increasingly annoyed that Shikamaru had broken the first of their many established patterns of behavior. She stood up straight, squared her shoulders, and started down the road towards Konoha’s restaurant district. He may not have been there to greet her, but she was pretty damn hungry from her journey and resolved to strategize over a meal at her favorite place, even if it was alone.

She ended up getting take-out and bringing it back to her apartment after the restaurant owner asked her where her “boyfriend” was, further piling on to Temari’s growing mountain of frustration. As she ate, standing alone at her kitchen counter, she found her gaze drifting to the shogi set, annoyed that this one little change in her routine had thrown her so off balance. Frustrated and determined not to let this affect her like an emotional little girl, she resolutely finished her meal and set off to take a bath. As she dumped bath salts into the hot water and lit scented candles with a little more force than usual, she repeated to herself: _I am not a teenager, I am stronger than this_ , and resolved to beat her mind into submission by force and greet him at tomorrow’s meetings in a way that let him know that she wouldn’t stand for this change in the game. She lowered herself into the steaming water all the way up to her chin and closed her eyes, smiling to herself. _I am Sabaku no Temari, and it is so on_.

* * *

At the next morning’s meeting, Temari seated herself very deliberately opposite Shikamaru. She allowed herself to stare at him more openly that she had in the past; she wanted to make him uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to finally act on what she knew must be a mutual understanding of attraction. Their game had been so carefully played that she knew he would pick up that this— a seemingly small gesture—as a flagrant violation of the rules. After meeting her gaze across the table no fewer than three times in five minutes, he sent her a questioning look, arching one thin eyebrow as an elderly diplomat droned on in the background about the upcoming adjustment in trade tariffs between Wind and Fire Country. She arched an eyebrow back and kicked him under the table, and enjoyed the resulted wince.

Temari didn’t look at him again for the rest of the meeting, but she could feel his eyes on her the whole time.

Later, on her way out the door, Shikamaru appeared at her side and stopped her with a hand on her elbow. Temari spoke before he could say anything.

“I’m a little disappointed you never showed last night. Now I finally understand what distracts you, and I was sure I was going to win.”

She turned and left before he could speak, leaving Shikamaru standing in the hall with his hand still outstretched and his jaw hanging open.

 _That’ll do,_ she thought to herself. _It’s only a matter of time._

* * *

Later that evening, after having the customary dinner with the Konoha kunoichi of her social circle and a cold shower to wash off the heat and sweat of the day, Temari put on her pajamas and settled in to wait. Reclining on her couch, she was dressed in an old t-shirt that she had worn to bed since she was 17, a little too short and tight across the chest for use in public, and a pair of small, comfortable shorts. She thoughtfully applied scented lotion to her arms and legs, and treated herself to using her expensive hair product, enjoying the gloss it gave to her curls and the scent that hung delicately around her face.

As such, Temari passed a pleasant couple of hours reading on the sofa, until she heard a quiet knock at the door. She glanced at the clock: 11:49 pm. The knocking resumed, louder this time, and she smiled to herself as she leisurely stood up from the sofa, stretched, and walked to the door. As the knocking resumed for a third time at an increasingly impatient rate, she swung the door open to reveal a slightly disheveled Shikamaru, ponytail a little looser than usual, cheeks lightly flushed, and his hand still raised to knock.

Temari observed his face carefully as he straightened to his full height and took in her outfit, his eyes lingering on the tight pull of the small shirt across her breasts, the exposed strip of her stomach, the tanned length of her legs, her bare feet. When his eyes finally came back to meet hers, she allowed herself a smirk.

“Did you just come here to ogle me, or is there a reason you’re showing up at my door at midnight on a Tuesday?”

Hearing her speak seemed to pull him together. “Can I come in?” he asked.

She nodded and stood aside, and he entered the apartment the apartment. This wasn’t the tone she had expected from him. Another deviation from their rules; they rarely spoke to each other so seriously.

He stood in the middle of her living room and turned, looking at a fixed point somewhere over her shoulder. He gestured towards the floor in the general direction of the shogi board.

“Let’s play.”

“That’s why you’re here? To play shogi in the middle of the night?”

He looked directly at her then, expression carefully unreadable. This was so odd. Temari felt turbulent emotions rise from deep inside her, felt them pushing at her ribs. She plowed on, words spilling out of her mouth that had been unsaid for years, finally saw the light.

“We were supposed to play yesterday, Shikamaru. But you broke the rules. The first one being: you pick me up at the gate. _Then_ we go eat, and _then_ we play shogi. You gave up your chance when you failed to perform rule number one.”

He turned away. _Was he embarassed?_ Temari ‘s words kept coming, Now that the dam was broken, a flood was inevitable.

“Was this because of what happened last time? That divergence from the rules? You did something that deviated from the tracks we’ve been on for so long, and just that little deviation gave me the idea that maybe finally we were acknowledging the thing we never speak about: the way you look at me.”

At this Shikamaru’s head snapped up and he looked her in the eye, expression stormy. “How _I_ look at _you?”_ he asked slowly, taking a step towards her. “How _I_ look at _you_? God, Temari, you think I can’t feel you watching me when we play? I can feel you looking at me and it makes it so hard for me to think!”

“Could have fooled me!”

“Fucking hell, Temari! You never make anything easy! Why do you have to keep antagonizing me when all I’m trying to do is live a normal life!” Shikamaru moved suddenly, crossing the room towards her in two longs strides. “My feelings about you were never supposed to be more than a crush. I mean, God, when I think about it, I’ve had a crush on you ever since we fought at the Chuunin Exams and through all these years you’ve made it be so easy to admire you, because I only see you every couple months and we always follow to the rules!”

Silenced momentarily upon hearing these uncharacteristically emotional words come out of Shikamaru’s mouth, Temari didn’t know whether to feel validated or upset. “You broke the rules first,” she ground out. “You didn’t leave right after the game like you always do!”

Shikamaru took another step closer, until he was close enough that she had to look up to look him in the eye. “You took your hair down,” he began forcefully, “and you were so beautiful. And it was so unlike you that I wanted to believe that it meant something.”

Temari was struck. To hear him compliment her outright and confirm out loud what she had long known to be true filled her with immense satisfaction, but she still didn’t understand.

“Then why did you leave?”

“I knew if I stayed, I would do something stupid, like kiss you or embarrass myself with these feelings.” He laughed harshly, without mirth. “I worried I would do what I’m doing right now.”

“Like you’re doing now? You haven’t even kissed me yet, crybaby.”

Shikamaru looked down at her then, brows drawn together and expression filled with open bewilderment, so unlike anything she had ever seen cross his face before that she almost laughed. But she didn’t get the chance, because she suddenly found herself being kissed desperately as Shikamaru pressed himself against her, hands flying to her hair and the hinge of her jaw, holding her in place as he kissed her with bruising force.

Temari responded in kind, opening her mouth and allowing their tongues to battle for dominance in a manner that resembled all of their other many arguments where neither was willing to back down. Her hands came up to grip the shoulders of his uniform vest, and she reveled in the feeling of his hands on her body, the sensation of his calluses as he slid his hand down her neck, the slight twinge of pain as he tugged on her hair, encouraging her to tilt her head back, to open to up to him.

Shikamaru must have decided that he needed some more leverage, because he walked Temari backwards until her back abruptly hit the kitchen counter. She gasped at the burst of sudden pain, breaking the kiss, and then found herself being hoisted until she was perched on the counter. Shikamaru looked like he was about to say something, but Temari wrapped her legs around his waist and hauled him in, and his hands flew to her hips, grabbing on and pulling her to his until she could feel the growing evidence of his arousal pressed against her core. The exuberant feeling Temari had of finally knowing that he was just as attracted to her as she was to him was quickly forgotten as she felt his hands move under her shirt above her waist, long fingers stroking the skin of her back as his he reclaimed her lips in an open-mouthed kiss.

Temari’s chest felt tight and she felt the heat of arousal low in her belly. She felt lightheaded, couldn’t remember the last time a man made her feel this way. She moaned into his mouth and arched into his touch, rolling her hips against his erection, eliciting a moan from him.

This movement seemed to awaken the rational part of Shikamaru’s brain that had been absent since he showed up at her door, and he abruptly broke the kiss and looked down at her, chest heaving, regaining some of his broken control. Temari looked up at him questioningly, confused and out of breath, but he seemed to find his composure, hands moving to her thighs as he looked down at the counter.

“I can’t do this, Temari.”

She smiled, grabbed his chin so he was forced to look at her. “It sure feels like you can do it to me,” she teased, grinding her hips against his lightly.

His face fell, and he pried her legs from around his waist, taking a few steps back and away from her to begin pacing anxiously, running a hand through his hair.

“Don’t joke about this, Temari,” he said tightly. “Please.”

She closed her mouth. It was a rare thing to see him so worked up. _Had he ever asked her a question so politely before?_

Shikamaru sighed and ran a hand through his hair again, stopping his pacing and turning to face her.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me? How you make me feel? The kinds of things I think when I’m around you? I would like nothing more than to rip off those tiny shorts and fuck you right there on the counter. But I can’t.”

“Why, Shikamaru?” Temari asked heatedly, taking in his appearance: the flush still high in his cheeks, the way his hands couldn’t seem to stay still. As he looked at her his eyes were hard, looking at her in a way he hadn’t in in years. To see him so closed off made Temari unexpectedly emotional. She had been feeling the warmth from his gaze for so long, to see it extinguished in moments left her feeling extremely off-balance.

Tamping down on her gut reaction of anger, Temari spoke in a low voice, level and calm. “If you had any doubts about my attraction to you, what we just did must have dispelled them.” 

Shikamaru lowered his gaze and looked somewhere in the direction of her feet, dangling from where she was still seated on the counter. Temari could still feel the imprint of where he had touched her, the way his hands, only moments ago, had slid under her shirt by her waist, how he had left her lips swollen and bruised from the intensity with which he had kissed her.

The silence drew on. He wouldn’t look at her. Temari was uncomfortable, and feeling more exposed and vulnerable than she could remember being in a long time. She decided she would have to be the one to break the silence, and drew in a deep breath.

“I want you, Shikamaru,” she said, her voice embarrassingly earnest to her own ears. To go against her ingrained habits of being avoiding directly expressing her feelings at all cost was making her feel like she had been stripped naked, and she suppressed a shiver and gripped the end of the counter, seeking some sense of solid ground.

Shikamaru looked up then, and the gaze he fixed her with was softer, yet still penetrating. The lines of his scowl smoothed out, and he suddenly looked very young.

“Temari,” he began, “you have to know that I want you, _so_ badly, but don’t you understand? Sleeping with you now would fulfill every fantasy I’ve had since I was fourteen, but it would _break_ me. To allow myself to hope would, _will,_ crush me...we live in different villages, for fuck’s sake, Temari, to be with you now would destroy any chance I would have at a normal life!”

This was not the response Temari expected her confession to garner. Her repressed anger flared, and suddenly incensed she pushed herself off of the counter and crossed the room, put herself up in his face, couldn’t hold herself back from yelling at him.

“Why, Shikamaru? Because I’m so fucking messed up? Because I’m too much of a pain in the ass for your cookie cutter notions of what a life should be?”

The anger in her voice and in her eyes brought the scowl back to his face, the power to his voice, and the hardness back to his eyes. “That’s not what I mean and you know it! Stop putting words in my mouth, Temari! Fuck! This is exactly what I’m talking about, every little thing you do and you say drives me crazy, makes me unable to think clearly!”

“Oh? And you’d rather have a life where you would go unchallenged at every turn? Find some boring girl who doesn’t call you on your bullshit, who’s no match for you intellectually?” Temari couldn’t stop herself from getting closer to his face as she spat out the words. “This is fucking typical of you, Nara, choosing to back away when things are just getting good. I can’t believe I wasted years thinking that you would finally show some goddamn backbone and choose me!”

Eyes wide and inches from Shikamaru’s face, Temari was shocked that she had let those words, those dangerous thoughts, fly out of her mouth. Shikamaru stood there, silent, holding her gaze, matching her green eyes flashing with anger with his own. Then he turned, and walked mechanically towards the door.

Temari was struck dumb. After all this buildup, all these years, she didn’t think he would actually leave when the tension finally snapped, even after what they had said to each other. Shikamaru reached for the doorknob and opened the door, pausing to look at her over his shoulder.

Temari unconsciously held her breath. Was he about to prove her right?

“I’ll see you around, Temari. Goodbye.”

The door clicked shut behind him. Temari, standing alone in the middle of room, the _click_ of the door echoing in her mind, was left with the feeling that by testing the limits of the rules of their game, she had shut that door forever.

Numbly, and not really knowing what she was supposed to do, she walked out of the living room and climbed into bed. Turning off the light, she lay staring at the ceiling in the dark, replaying their argument over and over in her mind’s eye. She had never seen Shikamaru act that way before, had never seen the way he looked at her change so abruptly, so many times. She was overcome with how much it had hurt.

She felt tears springing to her eyes, and was filled with rage. She had never shed tears over a man before, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to start now. Blinking the tears away, she rolled onto her side and repeated to herself like a mantra: _I am Sabaku no Temari, and I am stronger than this._

* * *

The rest of the week passed quickly. Temari saw Shikamaru in the diplomatic meetings they were both obligated to attend, but he wouldn’t look at her unless norms of politeness required he do so. Even then, he was distant and overly formal in his address, and wouldn’t look her in the eye.

When they walked out of the room after the final meeting of the week, the day before she was to leave Konoha until the next round of meetings in three months, he passed her in the hallway as she was headed out the doors of Hokage Tower.

“Goodbye, Temari-san.” He inclined his head respectfully as they passed each other, didn’t break his gait.

Temari-san? He hadn’t been that formal with her in years, not since before the war. Bewildered, as she walked away from the tower, Temari felt like that added syllable was the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. Distracted and caught up in her thoughts, she was much less observant than usual as she walked down the street and didn’t notice Sakura and Ino until it was too late.

“Temari-san!” They called out, rushing up to greet her. Ino gave her an enthusiastic hug. “I’m so happy we caught you before you return to Suna! You have to have dinner with us, we’ve barely seen you all week!” Ino said excitedly.

Temari opened her mouth to politely decline, but the eager (and slightly unhinged) way Ino was looking at her indicated that she wouldn’t be taking no for an answer. Temari sighed inwardly. “Sure thing, Ino,” she began resignedly, “but it’s your treat. Where to?”

And that was how Temari found herself seated at a small table in a barbeque restaurant, boxed in by two friends who she knew to be two of Konoha’s biggest gossips. While she didn’t doubt the authenticity of their desire to see her off before she left town for an extended period, she knew she would have to be careful choosing her words.

“So Temari, when will you be back in Konoha?” asked Sakura, “I haven’t had the chance to see you this whole week! There was a big birthday party for Choji two days ago, and I was hoping to see you there! Where were you hiding?” Her tone was teasing, but Temari wasn’t stupid. She was obviously fishing for information, and frankly, Sakura must be desperate for it if she put so little effort into hiding it. Ino couldn’t even contain her enthusiasm for Temari’s answer, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table with a dangerous gleam in her eyes.

“I was given an unexpected amount of work to do by the diplomatic council, and I had to stay in and get it finished before yesterday’s meetings,” Temari said carefully, and decided to lay it on thick. “I heard about the party, but it just wasn’t possible for me to get there—I was working straight through until after midnight.”

Ino made a loud noise of indignation. “Midnight! That’s when things were only getting good! The party went on until after 3!”

“I went straight to bed, Ino, I’m sorry. I already passed on my condolences to Choji for missing his party and wished him a happy birthday.”

Ino drew back, leaning against the back of her chair with her arms crossed over her chest, and fixed Temari with a shrewd gaze. After a moment, she lifted her hand to her chin and looked up into the middle distance in an exaggeration expression of deep pondering. “It was a great party,” she drawled, “but Shikamaru was in such a terrible mood. I haven’t seen him drink that much in a long time.”

Temari sensed a shift in mood. This wasn’t information extraction anymore—this was about to become a full-blown interrogation. She felt her heart rate pick up against her will, and dug her fingernails into her chair under the table. She schooled her expression into a blank mask.

“Nara has always had a proclivity towards bad habits,” Temari said evenly. “Smoking, drinking... for a guy who thinks he’s so smart, he makes a lot of stupid choices.”

Ino narrowed her eyes. “It seemed to me like Shikamaru had a reason to be upset that night.”

Temari returned Ino’s gaze, held it. After a beat Ino turned to Sakura and continued: “When I happened to lament the fact that our dear friend Temari wasn’t at the party, Shikamaru became rather upset. Don’t you remember, Sakura?”

Sakura nodded eagerly; her desire to confirm whatever suspicions she had about Shikamaru and Temari’s relationship far outweighed her desire to be subtle about it. “Yeah! He got very angry when I mentioned your name and actually left the party to go for a ‘smoke’...it was quite a while before he came back in, isn’t that right, Ino?”

Ino turned back to Temari with a smug expression and went in for the kill. “There must have been trouble in paradise. I hope you two didn’t have a fight?”

Temari felt the sting of pain as her nails dug further into the wood of her chair, and forced herself to breathe evenly. “Nara and I always fight, Ino, nothing happened this week that was any different.”

Ino clearly wasn’t buying it. “That’s interesting, Temari, Because I could have sworn I heard him grumbling to himself about ‘the rules’ as he went by. Would you have any idea what he could be referring to?”

Temari raised her arms in a shrug and plastered on a wide smile, making sure to show all her teeth.

“Ino, I have no idea.”

* * *

As she sped through the cool morning air on the road back to Suna, Temari allowed herself to finally think over what Ino and Sakura had told her the previous evening. Choji’s party was the night following the night that Shikamaru had shown up at her door. Though they had been trying to provoke her, the testimony of Ino and Sakura led Temari to the logical conclusion that she had been on Shikamaru’s mind, that he hadn’t calmly shut her out of his head like his cold behavior towards her at the week’s meetings had led her to believe.

She smiled to herself as the greenery of Fire Country flashed by. By the time she reached the desert, she felt lighter, reassured, by the knowledge that he had been as affected by what had happened as she was.

* * *

Three uneventful months passed. The height of summer faded away to autumn, and it was time for Temari to return to Konoha. She would be lying to herself if she said the prospect of seeing Shikamaru again didn’t make her nervous. She had spent the time since she had left Fire Country aggressively trying to squash her lingering hopes about him through a variety of means. She worked herself to exhaustion in masochistic training sessions, but she kept thinking about the feeling of his hands on her body when she was alone in bed at night, so she turned to anonymous sex. But the sex was always disappointing; while it scratched an itch, she found herself comparing the shape of these men to the lines of the body she was trying hard to forget. The first man was too short, and his hands were small, not nearly wide enough to span the expanse of her back from hip to hip. The second man was too muscular, his frame bulky and awkward, lacking grace. She wasn’t attracted to the way he moved.

As she made the three-day journey between villages, Temari attempted to distract herself with the scenery. She always relished the opportunity to travel through Fire Country at such a time. Growing up in the desert, she had come to appreciate how her diplomatic travels allowed her to experience the changing of the seasons that Wind Country lacked. The vibrant red and orange of the leaves against the bright blue sky made her happy, cleared her mind for a time. Then she noticed the clouds, white and puffy against the blue, and instantly thought of Shikamaru: in his familiar pose of lying on his back with his hands behind his head and one leg bent at the knee, taking in the slow roll of the clouds as they crossed the patch of sky above his head.

Temari turned her gaze back to the road ahead, annoyed that something as common as the clouds in the sky involuntarily turned her thoughts to him. She hadn’t heard a word from or about Shikamaru in the time since they had last parted, and she had prepared herself for the likelihood that she would not see him outside of their diplomatic duties during her stay in Konoha.

Therefore, when she arrived at the gate, she was not surprised that nobody was there to meet her.

Without missing a beat, she strode through Konoha, greeted familiar faces, stopped to chat with Tenten and accept a dinner invitation, and headed for her apartment.

As she turned the corner onto her street, she was thrown off guard when she saw a familiar silhouette propped against her building. Eyes wide, she halted in her tracks. Shikamaru wasn’t looking at her, but she _knew_ he must be aware of her appearance. She watched the end of the cigarette in his mouth burn bright for a moment, before he took it in his slender fingers and lowered it to his side, exhaling the smoke in a steady stream. Temari shook herself out of her stillness, and began to walk towards him.

Shikamaru raised his head to face her as she moved towards him, dropping the cigarette to the ground and crushing it under his toe. The acrid scent hung in the air as Temari stood before him. Shikamaru held her eyes for a few moments, expression calm and unreadable, but not cold. Temari looked back at him, confusion openly written across her face, until he pushed himself off the wall and stood to his full height.

“Come with me,” he said quietly, and turned to walk down the street.

Now Temari was irritated. _This was what he had to say to her after months of silence? After the way he had treated her at their last parting?_ But curiosity quickly got the better of her, and she jogged to catch up to him as he walked leisurely down the road.

She looked up at him. He didn’t speak. She studied him openly as they walked side by side in the golden light of the autumn evening. All around them, people were running errands and having loud conversations; the street was filled with noise. He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes never strayed from the path in front of them as he led her around a corner and through a series of quieter streets. They came to a series of stone stairs, and without pause he began to climb. Temari halted at the bottom, and Shikamaru was on the fourth step before he noticed she wasn’t beside him. He turned to look down at her questioningly.

“Where are you taking me, Nara? What the hell is going on?” Temari asked, voice brittle. The silence as they walked had made her feel itchy and uncomfortable; too close to her own thoughts, too far away from his.

Shikamaru sighed. “Just follow me, woman, we’re just going to the top of the stairs.” He turned and continued up the steps, leaving Temari to huff out her exasperation and follow behind him reluctantly. When she reached the top of the steps, she was surprised to find a sloping grassy park, quiet and empty in the late evening. The sun hung low in the sky; the sky was awash with color. The only noise that could be heard were the intermittent chirping of unseen birds, the shuffling movement of small animals. It was peaceful, and very beautiful.

After taking in the view for a few moments, Temari turned and realized Shikamaru had been watching her.

“Is this why you brought me here?” Temari asked, confused. “To see the sunset? It’s beautiful, but we do have sunsets in the desert.”

At that, Shikamaru smiled, just a small uptick at the corners of his mouth. “I come here to watch the clouds, when I want to avoid thinking.” He removed a hand from his pocket to gesture at the lush expanse of grass. “Come sit for a moment.”

She followed him warily, and when he sat and proceeded to lie all the way back on the grass, she knelt a few feet away, feeling uncomfortable and unsure of how to act. His eyes slid closed, he brought his hands to cradle the back of his head, and lifted his right knee so his foot was planted on the ground.

Temari, increasingly bewildered, didn’t know what to say. The rules had well and truly flown out the metaphorical window. She opted to face the sunset and enjoy the last of the autumn day’s warmth on her face, observe how the colors of the sky shifted as the sun began to sink under the horizon.

Temari’s mind began to race as she came up with a dozen possible outcomes of this bizarre encounter. She was brought suddenly back to the present by Shikamaru’s voice: “I just told you that I come here when I don’t want to think.”

She turned back to face him. His eyes were still closed. His face was a perfect image of relaxation in the low light, save the small line between his eyebrows indicating the stress behind his words.

He continued: “After you left, I came here practically every day. I was very angry at you, you know.” Temari bristled instinctively at this, but remained silent.

“This place used to be a haven for me. A place where my mind could go completely blank. But after what we said to each other three months ago, it didn’t work anymore.” One brown eye cracked open, focused on her. “All I could think about was you.”

Temari looked down at him in shock. Unable to speak in that moment, she could feel a blush, unbidden, rising in her cheeks. Confused by his words and embarrassed by her lack of control over her body’s reaction to them, she avoided his gaze and looked down at her hands in her lap. Shikamaru closed his eye again and continued speaking quietly.

“I couldn’t stop replaying that night in my head, Temari. How you felt under my hands, the noises you made, the way your voice sounded when you said to me: _I want you_...” He trailed off here for a moment. Temari burned a confusing mix of hope and embarrassment, didn’t dare to interrupt. Her throat felt dry. She clasped her fingers together; held on.

“But more than that, I kept hearing my own words over and over again. And at first, I thought I was justified in saying them. But after a while they started to sound pretty stupid. The girl I’ve been in love with for years said she wants me and I pushed her away, for what? A notion of normalcy I thought up at 14 and never thought to question...”

Shikamaru trailed off and was silent for a minute. Temari stared wide-eyed at her hands, mind racing. This sounded a lot like the confirmation of their mutual attraction she had been trying to get out of him three months ago, but after what had passed between them this confession felt too good to be true. As she grappled with these thoughts, trying to piece together a response, she didn’t hear him sit up.

She was startled by his fingers on her chin. Shikamaru gently tipped her face up, and her eyes snapped to meet his. His angular features, lit by the light of the setting sun, cast small shadows on his face.

“I didn’t realize what you were doing then, Temari, when you violated our rules. And despite fantasizing about it for years, I wasn’t ready to see it play out in real life.” His thumb stroked across her cheekbone. “I regret some of what I said that night, and I bet you do too, but I’m grateful that we said them because I know clearly what to do now, even if it will be an enormous pain in the ass down the road.”

He smiled at her then, open and honest, and Temari was surprised to find herself speechless yet again. So, instead of speaking, she boldly reached out and threaded her hand through his hair, and his eyes flicked down to her lips. Satisfied with that reaction and gaining confidence, Temari tightened her grip in his hair, tilting his head back much like he had done to her that night months ago. His smile only widened. He had obviously been expecting such a reaction. She gave him a small smile.

“Idiot,” she began. “I’m glad you finally caught on.”

She kissed him then, confidently, and was happy to feel him respond immediately in kind. He leaned forward as the hand on her face slid, and he pressed his thumb into the hinge of her jaw, asking a silent question. She responded to his requested by turning the kiss into something open mouthed and filthy, sliding her tongue between his parted lips. As Shikamaru began to respond with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, Temari pulled back, just far enough to look him in the eyes. Shikamaru looked momentarily confused, and she was spurred on by how quickly she was able to make him lose his composure. Before he had a chance to think about it, she pushed him roughly on the chest and he fell back into the grass with a huff. She threw herself down on top of him, elbows caging his head, and he lifted his face up to once again fuse his mouth to hers.

Temari was gratified as his hands flew to her hips, first gripping and then encouraging her to straddle his waist. This connected them at the hips, sending a spark up Temari’s spine and forcing a short groan from Shikamaru against her lips. She ground down against him, and he responded in kind, one of his broad hands sweeping up her back, pushing down to crush her breasts against his flak vest, the other sweeping down her thigh and coming back up to grab her ass through her kimono.

Shikamaru broke the kiss and slid his mouth in a hot line down her neck. Temari closed her eyes, relishing in the feeling, and was startled when he bit down suddenly on a patch of skin below her ear, pausing momentarily to suck on the spot he had just marked with his teeth.

Temari huffed out a laugh. “Marking me, Nara? You’ll pay for that later.” She laughed a little louder, as she realized their position. She was so caught up in emotion and desire, sprawled across his lap, that she had forgotten she was still wearing her fan strapped across her back and that his uniform vest was crushed uncomfortably against her breasts. She pushed herself up and off of his body, flopping to a reclining position close to him.

“Where the hell are you going, woman?” muttered Shikamaru, though the words lacked any real malice coming from a man with a goofy grin stretched across his usually stern features. Temari propped her head up on her hand and looked down at him. He smiled back up at her, a real smile that showed his teeth and reached his eyes, and she was very happy.

“I’m not having sex with you in this field, Nara. We’re both public figures and,” she gestured at her obi, the fan still sturdy on her back, “let’s be honest: logistically, it’s just not going to work right now.”

The open smile on his face morphed into something closer to a leer. “Oh...you want to talk logistics? I am a genius after all, I’m sure I could figure something out...”

Temari sat up fully and smacked him on the arm. “Ow! Damnit, woman, I was kidding!” Shikamaru yelped, standing up in a hurry. He offered Temari his hand and pulled her to her feet. The last of the sunset’s light was fading, and he was fuzzy in the near-darkness

“Then, let me take you home, Princess,” he said with a smirk.

“I actually _am_ a princess, you idiot, you’re the only person who gets away with talking to me like that,” she replied primly. Though she pretended to be offended for pretenses sake, their banter had taken on the fun, light quality that it had used to, when they were relaxed in each other’s presence. They made their way side by side back towards Temari’s apartment, hands brushing occasionally, the contact as they walked through the streets a private enjoyment as the atmosphere between them crackled with the anticipation of further privacy.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the two of them stood once again outside the door of her apartment. The mood between them was markedly different from the desperation with which they had clashed on the hill. After simmering separately for so long, the initial coming together of two very strong-minded individuals had blazed as hotly as one might expect. The quiet walk back to her apartment had burned in a different way; the anticipation of what was to come and the promise of the fulfilment of many years of imagining a similar scenario kept them both quiet, wondering.

Wordlessly, Temari unlocked the door and stepped inside, looking back over her shoulder at Shikamaru with a small smile. She cocked her head in a silent invitation, and he followed her inside. The door shut quietly, and she leaned in towards him teasingly, only to reach around him and slide the lock on the door into place. The quiet _snick_ echoed in the silent room. She stood up straight, looking up into Shikamaru’s face, then reached behind her body and removed her fan from her back. Breaking the tense eye contact between them, she looked away to carefully lean the fan against the wall.

Looking back into Shikamaru’s face, Temari saw the heat of arousal reawaken in his gaze. She slowly raised her hands and, resting her left hand on his shoulder, took the zipper of his flak vest in the fingers of her right. Raising an eyebrow, she smirked at him as she slowly unzipped his jounin vest, his gaze falling from hers momentarily to track the movement of her hand. Temari heard his sharp, quiet intake of breath, and was pleased at the reaction she was eliciting; that she could make something so simple an erotic act. She felt the weight of the years of tension between them vibrating in the air.

The zipper reached the bottom of the vest, so Temari pushed it over his shoulders. It fell to the floor with a _whumpf_ , the sound startlingly loud in the still room. Shikamaru eyes darted again to meet her gaze, and Temari allowed herself a victorious smirk at how quickly he was seemingly to losing his composure.

She turned and walk slowly towards the bedroom, pausing to look at him over her shoulder. He was looking at her with the same kind of hard intensity she had seen in his eyes when they fought. He was breathing deeply; without his vest she could trace the rise and fall of his chest. She felt warm, felt the stirrings of arousal that she hadn’t experienced in the months since they had so acrimoniously parted, that she hadn’t experienced since the last time the two of them stood together in this room.

“Come on, then,” Temari murmured. She turned and walked through the door to her bedroom, stopping at the foot of the bed. Orange light from the street lamps came in through the window and diffused throughout the room, giving off just enough to see in the darkness. She paused to undo her hair ties one by one, shaking out her curls, as she heard his quiet footsteps coming up behind her.

His mouth attached hotly to the side of her neck as warm hands slid around her waist, holding her still. Shikamaru was pressed up close against her back, and she could feel the evidence of his own arousal pressed against her backside.

“I never thought I would have so many opinions about your hair,” Shikamaru spoke quietly in her ear. His lips were so close, she could feel the wet warmth of his breath as he spoke. He continued: “I’ve spent years imagining what you look like with your hair down, imagining you would let me close enough to touch it. When you took it down that day, three months ago, I was so surprised. You were even more beautiful than I imagined, Temari...” His lips reattached to her neck, sucking another mark into her tanned skin as his hands slipped up her body; thumbs skimming the underside of her breasts. Flushing at the low timbre of his voice as he spoke these words in her ear, Temari drew in a sharp breath and tipped her head back against his shoulder, seeking to give him better access. She could feel her body heating up, felt too warm under her kimono.

Shikamaru drew away after one last nip to the soft skin just under her ear. His hands on her body pulled her, turning her in his arms. Temari lay her arms around his neck, rising up on her toes to kiss him hard for a moment before breaking away and fumbling with the red obi around her waist.

“Goddammit...” she muttered to herself. She glared up at Shikamaru when he dared to chuckle at her struggling. After a few more seconds, Temari triumphantly whipped the obi from her waist, dropping it on the floor. Her kimono, without the security of the belt, began to slip open, and she watched her partner’s eyes drop from her face to her chest. Unashamedly, she opened the kimono fully and pushed it from her shoulders, letting it puddle at her feet. She was left standing in her underwear: a solid black bra and plain blue panties. After all, she had been travelling, and had assumed this would be an ordinary Sunday. But she didn’t have time to feel uncomfortable standing before him; watching Shikamaru’s eyes hungrily take in the planes of exposed skin, she knew she had no reason to feel insecure.

“Now you,” Temari smirked at him, reaching out to the hem of the black shirt he wore under his uniform. His fingers beat her there before she had the chance to grab it, and he yanked it up and over his head, throwing it carelessly at his feet. Temari’s fingers changed course to slide across the pale skin along the top of his pants, but before she could make any headway he was reaching for her, demanding her attention once again with a deep kiss.

This one was different than the other kisses they had shared that night. It lacked the desperation that followed Shikamaru’s confession, but it wasn’t sweet or tender. This was the kiss of two people who wanted to possess the other, to make their partner forget about everything else around them.

As Temari’s hands wound into Shikamaru’s hair, his own moved from the flare of her hips, up her sides, and around her back to free the clasp of her bra. Temari broke the kiss when she felt it come loose, shaking it off of her shoulders without a second thought. She then sat down on the bed, sliding backwards while feeling the heat of Shikamaru’s gaze on her body, until she lay back fully reclined against the pillows. She felt warm despite the coolness of the night, her skin burning hot against the sheets, luminous in the diffuse orange light.

“Well?” she said, regarding him steadily, a challenge in her voice. Her tone was quiet, but authoritative, and Shikamaru smirked in response as his fingers went to his zipper. He didn’t say anything as he shucked his pants and took his underwear with it, erect cock bobbing as he stood back up. He observed her for several moments, taking in the image before him: Temari sprawled on the bed in nothing but her panties, blond halo on the pillows around her face. Totally unashamed in his nudity, Shikamaru took the time to relish the little things he was learning about her body, things that had been hidden from him under her clothes all the years they had known each other. How her thick hair was actually kind of curly when it wasn’t stuck up in her ponytails. How she had a thin, pink scar crossing her upper thigh—long healed— another on her abdomen. The color of her nipples, a dusky pinkish-brown, set against the canvas of her sun-kissed skin.

Her blue-green eyes flashed at him in the low light of the bedroom. After watching his eyes track over the curves and planes of her body for what felt like a short eternity, she was about to open her mouth and tell him to get a move on when he reached out and wrapped his broad hand around her right ankle. Temari’s mind raced, and she realized he hadn’t just been staring at her, but likely charting a plan of attack.

His thumb skimmed across the sensitive skin on the inside of her ankle, sending goosebumps racing up her leg. He shifted and knelt on the edge of the bed, moving to crawl over her body. Letting his hand slide up her leg and over her waist, his face came to be level with her as he planted his other hand on the pillow by her left shoulder. His eyes were black, all pupil, as he gazed down at her heatedly.

Shikamaru’s left hand slid up Temari’s waist to cup her breast, and she gasped as he weighed it in his palm and thumbed across her nipple, already hard and peaked just from the feeling of his eyes on her body. He lowered his head as if to kiss her.

“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about you laid out like this, under me?” he asked almost casually, his lips a scant inch above hers. He rolled her nipple between his fingers, forcing a gasp out of Temari as she unconsciously arched her back into the touch. He lowered his head to the right to kiss her neck as he continued his assault on her breast.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think, through the years, and I have a very active imagination. I still can’t really believe you’re letting me touch you like this,” he said, voice scratchy. He ground his hips down here, and she stifled a moan, spreading her legs wider as he rocked against her sensitive core.

He released her breast and took her wrists in his hands, pinning them on the pillows next to her head, continuing to roll his hips against her teasingly. Temari’s breath came faster, but she allowed herself to be held there, tilted her chin up defiantly even liquid heat pooled in her belly and she felt her control start to slip. A small noise, almost a whimper, slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Shikamaru’s smirk widened. His face was very closed to hers—she could feel the warmth of his breath ghost across her lips. “I’ve always wondered about the noises you would make,” he murmured as he tightened the hold on her wrists. “Don’t hold them back. I want to hear you.”

He kissed her then, hard and desperately while continuing to grind his cock into the covered apex of her thighs. Temari moaned shamelessly into his mouth and her fingers flexed instinctively for something to grab onto, but then Shikamaru was pulling away as quickly as he had attacked. He moved his mouth with intent down her body, pressing hot open mouth kisses to her collarbone, the hollow in between her breasts, finally taking her right nipple into his mouth and scraping it roughly with his teeth, running the fingers of his left hand across the front of her panties. Temari cried out as he continued to tease the pink bud with his teeth and tongue while stroking her folds through the fabric, feeling her wetness even through the barrier. He moved to her other breast, giving it the same harsh treatment, causing Temari to writhe under him. She threw a hand to his head, fingers digging into his hair as she held him to her chest as her other hand gripped his shoulder, nails digging in.

His mouth released her breast and he raised his eyes to look up at Temari’s face gaze heated and heavy-lidded. He placed an open mouth kiss on her trembling stomach, then another a couple inches lower, making a trail that moved lower and lower until he was achingly close to where she wanted him to touch her the most. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties, pulling them down and off, throwing them carelessly behind him. Temari didn’t have a moment to think about the sudden exposure because Shikamaru had pushed her legs wide and was delicately running an exploratory finger through the wetness between her thighs. Temari, having had many private fantasies about what his slender fingers could do, ground her hips down shamelessly against the contact, pleased when he took the hint and stroked her more firmly, finally letting his index finger slip inside her.

“Ah!” she gasped, back arching off the bed as he pumped his finger slowly in and out. “More, Shikamaru!” she cried as the tension coiled in her belly wound tighter, spreading heat throughout her limbs.

He obeyed her plea immediately, slipping his middle finger in alongside the other seamlessly, eyes riveted to the spot where they disappeared inside her body. Temari tossed her head and moaned as his curled his fingers, quickly finding the spot inside of her that made her see stars, relentlessly stroking it over and over again. Temari cried out and lost all sense of time as she felt herself rising quickly towards orgasm, the tension in her lower belly white-hot and tighter by the second. Her fingers grasped the sheets as she cried out.

“ _Ah!_ Shikamaru! I’m so close!”

Seemingly pleased at hearing her call his name, he surprised her by lowering his mouth to her clit, sucking on it harshly as his fingers ramped up their assault. A few moments of the dual stimulation—the friction of his long fingers and the hot wetness of his mouth on her most sensitive place—sent Temari over the edge, her core clenching around his fingers as she cried out his name.

Shikamaru continued to lap at her clit and slowly pump his fingers as she rode out the aftershocks of the most intense orgasm in her recent memory, finally releasing her and moving back up her body to reclaim her mouth. She returned his kiss with enthusiasm, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his lean waist, grinding up against the silky hardness of his straining cock. His composure finally seemed to break, then, and he pulled back far enough to ask if she had a condom handy, and then followed her instructions to rifle through the drawer in the nightstand.

As he rolled the condom down his length, he wondered briefly why she would have these in Konoha, and was overcome with a surge of jealously. He steadied himself by her head as he used his other to lift her right leg to rest on his shoulder, spreading her wide and aligning himself with her opening. He let out a broken groan as slipped inside her, Temari gasping as he sunk into her inch by inch, her body easily accommodating him as he drew out and made an experimental thrust, forcing a choked moan to slip from her lips. Embolded by her reaction, he thrust again, a little harder, and was gratified with the same noise. He tightened his grip on her thigh pressed against his chest, and Temari squeezed her eyes shut as he began as rhythm, hard and deep, the sounds of his exertion mingling with her breathy moans in the air between them. Shikamaru’s eyes roved over her wild hair, the beautiful flush that had spread from her face all the way down to her chest, the bouncing movement of her breasts with every hard thrust.

They moved together like this for several minutes, Shikamaru cataloging her every noise, every reaction, when he suddenly let her leg drop. Slinging them one by one behind his waist, he rose up onto his knees, strong hands holding her hips up and off of the bed completely as he drove into her with increasing speed. Temari’s eyes snapped open as the new angle scraped deliciously inside her, sending her barreling down the path towards a second orgasm. She reached a hand down and began making quick, rough circles on her clit, desperate noises escaping her on every thrust, crying out _yes, there, Shikamaru, please_ as she felt the tension wind tighter inside her belly. Sensing her climax was near, Shikamaru picked up the pace, driving forcefully into her feeling his balls tighten as he too raced towards his impending release. After a few more hard thrusts Temari cried out and gripped the sheets, her second orgasm rolling over her as her cunt contracted around Shikamaru’s cock, pulling a loud moan from her partner’s lips.

Shikamaru clenched his teeth and willed himself to hold on, releasing Temari’s hips and falling to his elbows, caging in her head. He kissed her harshly as he thrust slow and deep, biting down on her lower lip as she cried out, sensitive from her orgasm but delighting in the pleasure-pain of overstimulation. He pressed himself fully against her, chest to chest, and her nails dug into his muscular back as he buried his face in her neck, thrusts slowly increasing in speed as he desperately chased his own release. Temari dragged a hand up his back and scraped her nails across the back of his neck, called his name quietly against the shell of his ear—and that was all it took.

“ _Tema-ri, ah!”_ her name rolled brokenly off of his tongue as his hand gripped the curve of her hip. He thrust inside her once, twice more, holding her flush to him as he finally found release.

They stayed wrapped in each other for several moments, maybe even minutes, Shikamaru panting hotly into her neck as her hands slid soothingly over the planes of his back, his body still cradled between her thighs, as they came down together from their respective highs. While he was a little heavy, Temari reveled in the closeness, enjoying the feeling of smallness under his larger frame and the press of skin to skin. He finally seemed to muster the strength to move, lifting his head from her shoulder to look her in the eyes. He gently pushed her sweaty bangs from her face and kissed her gently as he pulled out.

As he moved off of her and away, Temari was surprised at how much she mourned the loss of contact. She had thought, based off of her previous experiences, that she wasn’t the type to desire cuddle after sex, but as she watched him stand and dispose of the condom, she decided that like with so many other things, with him it was different.

Shikamaru stood by the bed and stretched, his back to her, and Temari admired the solid lines of his frame once again, backlit by the window. In his nudity, she could fully admire the stretch and pull of his muscles: the corded length of his arms, the solid muscles of his back, his strong legs. She could see already the red marks forming that she had left on the pale canvas of his back.

She called out to him quietly, stretching her arms over her head and arching her back in a deliberate attempt to coax him back to her side. He turned at the sound of her voice and smiled at her, a genuine smile, soft and small.

“Who would have thought you were so docile after sex, woman?” he teased, though his words lacked any real heat—he was already moving back towards her. He lifted up the blanket and lifted an eyebrow in a silent question.

Temari rolled her eyes. “I’m guessing you’ve entertained the thought, you idiot. And yes, you’re staying. Unless you don’t want to go again in the morning?”

The smile on his face slid into a exaggerated leer. “Well, if you’re offering...” he trailed off, slipping into the bed and pulling her under the sheets with him. He lay on his back and she settled against his side, slipping her leg between his.

Blond head pillowed on this chest, Temari reflected on how this banter was comfortable; familiar. She would almost say it followed the rules, if their lying naked together wasn’t evidence enough that they had well and truly thrown the rules to the wind. She smiled to herself. She felt his fingers come up to stroke her arm, gently, before falling to rest his hand at her waist. They lay in comfortable silence for a while, and Temari observed with sleepy interest the contrast of her tanned hand as it rested upon his pale chest. She was almost sure he had fallen asleep, as the rise and fall of his breaths were soft and slow, when she was surprised by the vibration of his chest under her cheek as he spoke.

“We haven’t magically solved all our problems with sex, you know,” Shikamaru said quietly. “You’re still only here for a week, we still live in different villages.” His voice was carefully neutral; but she could sense his seriousness.

Temari exhaled again his chest and slid her thumb along his one of his ribs. “I’m sure I can find more excuses to come here. You could, even, come to Suna.” At that she heard him huff out a small laugh against her hair.

“If you really want me, you’ll have to learn to love the desert,” she continued. “And my brothers,” she added as an afterthought. Shikamaru let out a groan at the thought of the two of them, the vibration tickling Temari’s cheek. 

“They’re going to hate me now, you realize,” Shikamaru huffed out.

Temari didn’t respond for a long moment. Lying with him in the dark, pressed skin to skin, she was more content than she had been in a very long time. Even the thought of her brother’s reactions couldn’t dampen how she felt in this moment.

“You’re the genius here,” she said quietly, settling further in against him. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

FIN


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was initially conceived as a oneshot, but as time passed it felt like the story was begging for a second chapter. And once I started writing it, it just kept coming. 
> 
> So here it is: Shikamaru's POV.

On a grassy hillside, Shikamaru was lying on his back in a familiar pose: eyes closed, fingers locked behind his head, right leg bent at the knee and right foot planted on earth. The early spring sun was warm on his face as he exhaled, long through his nose. He cracked open an eye, raising his hand above his face to block out the sun. The face of his watch glinted down at him, reminding him of the time.

_She’s probably reached the gate by now._

This was the first time that he wasn’t there to pick her up at the gate. After her many years serving as a diplomat, Temari knew Konoha very well, but there was an unspoken understanding between them that Shikamaru always goes to pick her up at the gate. He walks with her to her favorite restaurant in Konoha, he lets her needle him about how he’s still slouching, lets her mock the cigarette sticking out of his vest pocket. _You think that makes you look cool or something?_ He is just happy to know that she looks at him.

He gives as good as he gets, though, and she usually smacks him in retaliation, though never hard enough to hurt. He feels the memory of her touch as he watches her eat her favorite regional dishes with a childish delight, it always makes him smile. The waitress always assumes that they’re a couple. They look at each other and roll their eyes, _not this again,_ but he’s seen the way she looks at him when she thinks he isn’t paying attention.

He pays for their meal, a tradition established when they were teenagers and his attraction to her was still about 50% rooted in fear. Now, he is ashamed to admit to himself the bit of masculine pride this act offers him; she always pays her own way when she goes out with her other friends. That her pays for her meal always feels like a date, but he never acts on this feeling. It’s an unspoken rule.

He then walks her back to her apartment, and she invites him inside for tea and a game. They play shogi, and he beats her, but has been surprised once or twice when he almost found himself in checkmate after spending too many moments stealing glances at her while she’s focused on the board.

This is Shikamaru’s favorite part of the evening. His friends would probably think it’s hilarious that watching Temari play shogi turns him on, but in truth it is the only time they spend together where she seems totally relaxed.

She removes her fan, leans it carefully against the wall by the door. She slips off her sandals and walks barefoot to the kitchen to put water on for tea. The first time this happened, he was so disarmed by how naturally she seemed to take to his presence in her space, that he removed his shoes and flak vest after having an irrational thought to even the stakes. When she turned around to offer him a cup of tea, for a very brief moment her eyes slid down his chest before she brought her gaze back up to his face, smirked, and said _ready to get your ass kicked, Nara?_ But that small movement of her gaze was enough validation that he continued to take his vest off when he was in her home.

In these unguarded moments, he allowed himself to indulge his hidden attraction to her. He knew it was dangerous, that it could jeopardize their rules, but in the minutes that she studied the board he was able to quietly admire the curves of her body, the shape of her jaw, the movement as she wound a strand of hair around the index finger of her left hand, thinking. The way she bit her full lower lip when she was particularly deep in thought. The last one sends his brain down a track that wasn’t entirely appropriate, so he turns his attention back to his tea. He can’t help but smile at the moment when she realizes that she can’t beat him. She pretends to be annoyed, but Shikamaru suspects she just likes spending this time with him.

He had last seen her like this two months ago. He stood up to leave after a particularly difficult game, and without thinking he had reached out to take both their mugs back to the kitchen. As he crossed the short distance to the sink, he laughed at himself. Shikamaru wasn’t known for being a particularly generous houseguest, but in the moment, he hadn’t thought twice about it. Then a quiet panic started fluttering in his chest.

_This is what people in relationships do. You’ve just exposed yourself. You aren’t this nice. Just because she flirts with you doesn’t mean she spends all her time thinking about you, like you do with her—_

Shikamaru forced himself to calm down, and turned around with a rapidly beating heart, ready to make a swift exit. He had not expected to see her staring up at him from where she was seated on the floor, her hair down around her face.

He was so keyed up and so surprised that he knew it was showing in his expression. But Shikamaru was a shinobi, and _he was_ _in control of his emotions_ , so he quickly schooled his expression into smirk. Snark was familiar territory.

He barely remembers their exchange. His could hear his blood rushing in his ears, feel it rushing to parts of his body that would be extremely embarrassing if he didn’t get the hell out. He managed to evade the game pieces she hurled at him in a fit of anger at his poor response, hearing the telltale _thunk_ as they embedded in the door behind his head.

Shikamaru dropped his head back against the wood, and let out a long sign. He had just unthinkingly broken their unspoken rules, and then she had broken them right back. Something in his chest clenched as he grappled with what it could mean, and as increasingly outrageous scenarios filtered through his mind, there was a nagging voice in his head that said: _she broke the rules to. She wanted you to look at her._

That was a dangerous road to go down, and to think about that road clearly, Shikamaru knew he needed to put distance between them. With a last look back at her door, he walked down the hallway.

At present, back on the grassy hillside, Shikamaru let his eyes slide closed, brought his hands to rest on the stomach of his flak vest. He interlaced his fingers and tried to focus on his breathing.

In _. A cool breeze._ Out _. A pair of birds chirping._ In _. The rustle of the grass._ Out _. The floral smell of nearby trees, blossoming._ In _. The floral scent of her shampoo; catching the scent as they walked side by side down the street._ Out. _The shock of seeing her hair down._ In. _The way she had looked up at him, her green eyes flashing in the midst of the blond halo._ Out. _She looked so beautiful that day, he almost said something stupid, almost acted on his desire._

Shikamaru frowned. _Shut up_ , he directed at the area of his brain that, annoyingly, always seemed to be thinking about her even when he was attempting to devote his full attention to _not thinking about her_.

But the voice would not shut up. The train had left the station. As he stared up at the clouds, Shikamaru’s mind was overtaken.

* * *

The following morning. Shikamaru was seated at a large table surrounded by several old diplomats and was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. It was no surprise that his violation of their rules would result in some sort of retaliatory action. What _was_ surprising, however, was how much her direct gaze from across the table affected him. She never looked at him this openly, let her eyes so flagrantly roam around his features, and in public at that.

Shikamaru felt overly warm. He broke eye contact and felt with a growing sense of desperation that his palms were clammy; he clenched his left fist on top of the table and brought his right hand down to rest on his thigh.

Some old diplomat droned on about something important but terribly boring. Shikamaru couldn’t focus on anything except Temari and what she must be up to. He began to consider his options.

_She’s angry with me for standing her up. She is doing this on purpose to throw me off balance._

_She’s disappointed that I wasn’t there to meet her. She is doing this so I will be forced to tell her why._

For a brief moment, Shikamaru dared to hope; hope that she had missed his presence as much as he had missed hers. The rational part of his brain chimed in: _you didn’t meet her for a reason._ So, he attempted to stand his ground. He glanced over at Temari and met her eyes, carefully lifting a brow in a questioning glance.

She mirrored his expression. Then she swiftly kicked him in the shin.

As the meeting ended, Shikamaru hardened his resolve: he was going to confront her. He had a plan of action: start with a joke— _did you miss me yesterday?_ Gauge the tone of her response for an appropriate follow up; he couldn’t afford to be confused when it came to her. He had spent so long in stasis, carefully following the same tracks they laid out years before, that he had never considered what might happen if they deviated from those tracks except in his most private fantasies. And even then, those thoughts were restricted primarily to imagining what it would feel like to kiss her, to feel her body pressed against him and the warmth of her skin under his fingertips.

He had a hundred imagined scenarios for how they could fuck. But he never tried to imagine how they would get there, if they would finally speak openly and come together as a couple. It was too close to reality, too messy, too unpredictable. He knew his feelings for her were dangerous; now he would take his cues from Temari.

He was roused from his thoughts when he noticed she was on her way out the door. _She wasn’t going to come talk to me?_ Before he knew what he was doing, he was up and out of his chair, reaching out to grab Temari by the elbow. She turned to look at him.

“I’m a little disappointed you never showed last night. Now I finally understand what distracts you, and I was sure I was going to win.”

She turned and left before he could speak, leaving Shikamaru standing in the hall with his hand still outstretched and his jaw hanging open. His usually busy mind was a cavernous echo of the same thought: _She missed you._

* * *

Shikamaru spent the evening chain smoking in the woods of his family lands. Sat on the forest floor, back against a tree, he stared blankly out into the darkening woods. Drawing the cigarette to his lips, he took a long drag as he replayed the events of the last 24 hours in conjunction with those of two months ago.

_You did something nice for her in a way that made your feelings obvious. She took her hair down, an action you have never seen her take in all the years you have known her. It must have been significant. You were surprised, overwhelmed, and almost said something irrational. You made a joke instead. She got very angry. You left. You didn’t come back._

_Y_ _ou realized that you got too close to creating an untenable situation; any relationship you form with her is doomed to fail. She doesn’t live in your village. She is too stubborn, too quick to anger, the two of you argue all the time._

_She is beautiful, passionate. There’s no other woman like her. She challenges you._

_She told you today, in her own way, that she missed you yesterday. She wants you._

Squeezing his eyes shut, Shikamaru dropped his head back against the tree. He knew he needed to talk to he— it was obvious that they needed to have a conversation about where the two of them stood. For once, they couldn’t play games. One or both of them was going to get hurt. It was better to end things before they got out of hand, more logical than indulging in a passionate love affair and getting his heart broken later.

He opened his eyes to take in the darkening tree canopy. _Is it really so bad, though?_ The woman of his dreams had confirmed that she was, in fact, interested in him—in real life. He should be walking on air, but all he felt was anxiety.

The light slipped from the evening as he contemplatively smoked another cigarette. Time passed; he didn’t keep track He imagined several variations of what she would say if he showed up at her apartment.

He slowly rose to his feet. It was now very dark, but he knew the forest well. His feet took him back to the main road with little thought, and he found himself wandering towards her door.

* * *

Shikamaru knocked before his brain caught up to his hand. He caught sight of his watch, which informed him it was almost midnight.

 _Shit,_ he thought, eyes darting around rapidly as he felt his face heat. _What the hell is she going to think of me showing up here in the dead of night? I didn’t know it was so late—_

The sight of her cut off his panicked internal monologue. _What the hell was she wearing?_ Her breasts pressed tight up against her shirt, which was _definitely_ too small—he could see a smooth strip of her tan stomach above her shorts which were, in themselves, shocking, as they revealed almost the full length of her beautiful legs.

“Did you just come here to ogle me, or is there a reason you’re showing up at my door at midnight on a Tuesday?”

Her voice jarred him, reminded him that he was shamelessly running his eyes over her body in a way that he had never dared to before, and he was jolted back to reality.

“Can I come in,” he asked, desperate to get out of the public hallway. _To be the only one to see her like this,_ he thought, face heating. The sight of her dressed this way had derailed the argument he had been building for the last several hours. He had never seen her in so little clothing.

She let him stalk past her without a word. Shikamaru’s eyes darted around the room frantically as his brain attempted to come up with a reasonable excuse to be there. His eyes landed on the shogi board in its usual place on the floor.

“Let’s play.” He winced. It sounded stupid even to his own ears.

Temari obviously wasn’t buying it. “That’s why you’re here?” she asked incredulously, “To play shogi in the middle of the night?”

Shikamaru suddenly remembered that he was there to have an honest and direct conversation. He was distracted by her outfit, however, and entertained a flash of a fantasy where he could slide his fingers along the strip skin exposed by her too-small t-shirt.

Temari was becoming visibly annoyed. “We were supposed to play yesterday, Shikamaru. But you broke the rules. The first one being: you pick me up at the gate. _Then_ we go eat, and _then_ we play shogi. You gave up your chance when you failed to perform rule number one.”

Hearing this brought Shikamaru back to the moment. Her acknowledgement of their rules felt wrong, and he felt heat rush to his face. He turned away so she wouldn’t see his blush, tried to give himself a moment to regroup. The mission was going off the rails, and he had been here less than a minute.

But Temari kept talking. “Was this because of what happened last time? That divergence from the rules? You did something that deviated from the tracks we’ve been on for so long, and just that little deviation gave me the idea that maybe finally we were acknowledging the thing we never speak about: the way you look at me.”

Shocked, Shikamaru whipped around to meet her heated gaze. The sudden revelation had his mind reeling.

“How _I_ look at _you?”_ he asked slowly, taking a step towards her. “How _I_ look at _you_? God, Temari, you think I can’t feel you watching me when we play? I can feel you looking at me and it makes it so hard for me to think!”

This comment only riled her more. “Could have fooled me!”

The part of his brain devoted to Temari took control of his mouth. Secret words, private thoughts came tumbling out before Shikamaru had a chance to think.

“Fucking hell, Temari! You never make anything easy! Why do you have to keep antagonizing me when all I’m trying to do is live a normal life!” Shikamaru found himself moving suddenly, crossing the room towards her in two longs strides. “My feelings about you were never supposed to be more than a crush. I mean, God, when I think about it, I’ve had a crush on you ever since we fought at the Chuunin Exams and through all these years you’ve made it be so easy to admire you, because I only see you every couple months and we always follow to the rules!”

His chest heaved as his words hung around the two of them in the stillness of the room. Shikamaru watched several emotions wage war across her expressive face; anger, confusion, acceptance.

“You broke the rules first,” she finally ground out. “You didn’t leave right after the game like you always do!”

Shikamaru couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He suddenly felt intoxicated by her presence. The scent of her perfume hung in the air, he stepped closer to her to feel it surround him. She raised her chin to look him in the eye, her cerulean eyes sharp.

“You took your hair down,” Shikamaru began forcefully, his drunken feeling decided for him that it was time the truth be told. “And you were so beautiful. And it was so unlike you that I wanted to believe that it meant something.”

Unguarded surprise took over her elegant features. He searched Temari’s face for a sign, any sign, that she wanted him the same way he wanted her.

She asked him a question: “then why did you leave?”

_Because I was scared by how much I wanted you. Scared by how much you mean to me, what I would do for you. What it would mean if I allowed myself to hope._

Shikamaru couldn’t bring himself to say these things out loud. “I knew if I stayed, I would do something stupid, like kiss you or embarrass myself with these feelings.” He laughed, running a hand down the back of his neck, but the sound was harsh to his own ears, grating. “I worried I would do what I’m doing right now.”

“Like you’re doing now? You haven’t even kissed me yet, crybaby.”

Bewildered, Shikamaru looked down into Temari’s face, looking for the joke that he must have missed. But she was smiling, open and relaxed, and he realized that he was an enormous fool.

He lowered his mouth to hers before he was fully aware of his actions. He kissed her harshly, desperately, as he slid his hands over the curves of her body, bringing one up to cup her neck and tighten in her hair. He pulled her head back, he wanted her to open up for him, he wanted her to know how badly he wanted her, now that he knew with total certainty that she wanted him as well.

 _Leverage_ , supplied his last functioning brain cell, and through the fog of his desire Shikamaru managed to walk the two of them across the room until Temari’s back hit the kitchen counter, causing her to gasp into his mouth. Shikamaru relished in the small noise, filed it away for later reference as he took advantage of their slight separation, sliding his hands under her muscular thighs to hoist her onto the countertop. As he looked into her face, taking in her flushed cheeks and swollen lips, he almost said something completely irrational. Before his traitorous mouth had the chance, she was wrapping her long legs around his waist, pulling him into her until his growing erection was pressed directly up against her core. Shikamaru sighed into her mouth, taking advantage of their closeness to slide his hands under her shirt, to finally feel her skin like he had imagined so many times before alone in the darkness of his bedroom. The skin of her back and waist was soft under his fingertips, and he took great pleasure in stroking her there as she arched her back, suddenly rolling her hips against his cock.

The sudden jolt of friction snapped him out of his reverie, brought Shikamaru back into his own head. _This isn’t what I came here to do._

With great difficulty, he pulled his head back, bringing his hands out from under Temari’s shirt to rest on her thighs. _I can’t believe I’m about to do this,_ he thought. _I am the greatest idiot alive._

He averted his eyes in the desperate hope that it would make him more lucid. “I can’t do this, Temari.” The words fell brokenly from his lips.

Her hand came up to cup his chin, demanding that he look at her. “It sure feels like you can do it to me,” she said, an easy smile on her lips, tone light.

Her attitude made his emotions run hot, flare. He knew he needed to put space between them if he was going to say what was on his mind. He gripped her knees and unwrapped her legs from around his waist, took a step back. But the scant few feet between them didn’t do much for his racing pulse. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He couldn’t stay still, his mind was just an echo chamber for everything he had ever thought about her, and now it was coming out of his mouth, he couldn’t stop it—

“Do you have any idea what you do to me? How you make me feel? The kinds of things I think when I’m around you? I would like nothing more than to rip off those tiny shorts and fuck you right there on the counter. But I _can’t_.”

Upon hearing this, Temari started to get angry. Her eyes narrowed and her shoulders tensed: she was gearing up to fight. Or so he thought.

“Why, Shikamaru?” she asked, as she seemed to put visible effort into remaining calm. Shikamaru was surprised. It was extremely unlike her to back down from an argument. He didn’t know what to say, he turned away, looked down at the floor. The silence dragged on, unbearable.

Then he heard: “I want you, Shikamaru.”

Shikamaru’s head jerked back around to look at her, still seated there on the counter. Her voice—he had never heard her sound that way before, could it be—?

He drew in a breath and forced himself to relax, emotions warring behind his eyes. In only a few words, she had just laid herself bare before him. He knew how good it would feel to surrender to her, to just be two people, together. _But it’s doomed before it can begin. It would be cruel to believe otherwise. I can’t do this._

“Temari,” he began, her name leaden in his mouth, “You have to know that I want you, _so_ badly, but don’t you understand? Sleeping with you now would fulfill every fantasy I’ve had since I was fourteen, but it would _break_ me.” To say these words out loud was a physical pain.

“To allow myself to hope would, _will,_ crush me...we live in different villages, for fuck’s sake, Temari, to be with you now would destroy any chance I would have at a normal life!”

Shikamaru stood there, chest heaving with the residual emotion of his outburst. He saw the anger in her eyes now, in the set of her jaw; he knew what was coming. Temari put herself up in his face, fire in her eyes. It hurt to see her so angry so soon after he had held her in his arms, had heard her speak the words she had only ever spoken to him in the most private corners of his mind. But Shikamaru felt like he was doing what needed to be done, even if it was painful.

“Why, Shikamaru? Because I’m so fucking messed up? Because I’m too much of a pain in the ass for your cookie cutter notions of what a life should be?”

Even though he was expecting her fury, Shikamaru was unable to restrain his response. It was a trend with her; logic meant nothing when she was around. “That’s not what I mean and you know it! Stop putting words in my mouth, Temari! Fuck! This is exactly what I’m talking about, every little thing you do and you say drives me crazy, makes me unable to think clearly!”

“Oh? And you’d rather have a life where you would go unchallenged at every turn? Find some boring girl who doesn’t call you on your bullshit, who’s no match for you intellectually?” Temari couldn’t stop herself from getting closer to his face as she spat out the words. “This is fucking typical of you, Nara, choosing to back away when things are just getting good. I can’t believe I wasted years thinking that you would finally show some goddamn backbone and choose me!”

Her eyes widened as she cut herself off. She seemed shocked by her own directness. It was unlike both of them to put their feelings about anything out in the open, and yet...

Shikamaru looked down at her, but he couldn’t feel angry anymore. He only felt an overwhelming sadness, and a growing sense that he was the biggest fool who ever lived for doing what he was about to do. _She’s a round peg in a square hole. It would be cruel to try and make her fit. She can’t see it now, but, hopefully, she will one day._

Shikamaru felt numb. He knew he needed to leave, or else he was going to accidentally sabotage both of their lives, so he turned for the door.

With the last of his resolve, he took one last look at her. Temari was staring at him from the center of her living room, lips swollen, a blush high in her cheeks. Hair in complete disarray. She was the most beautiful woman alive, and she was looking at him like he was insane.

“I’ll see you around, Temari. Goodbye.” The words rang weak and hollow even to his own ears. After everything they had been through together, the relationship they had built, however limited, these words seemed to him like the perfect fit for the utter mess he had made of the trust between them. It was fitting.

_You don’t deserve any better._

He closed the door quietly behind him.

* * *

It was after midnight as Shikamaru found himself walking numbly though the streets of the village. He forced himself to keep walking as the two sides of his brain warred for control of his feet. He knew if he stopped moving, he would probably go back to her, making a further mess of an already disastrous situation. He pulled a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, set it between his lips. As he tried to light it, he noticed angrily that his hands were shaking. It took three tries to light the flame.

He knew it was an ugly habit, but cigarettes usually calmed his nerves, helped him think. He focused on the ground in front of him as he tried to calm his racing pulse.

_This is what I wanted to do. I always knew it would hurt. She’s angry with me, but she’ll see eventually that this is the right move, even if I let things get out of control tonight._

Shikamaru walked, focusing on rhythm of his feet and the mechanical motion of his arm bringing the cigarette to his lips rather than where he was going. He was a little surprised when he arrived at his own front door. He let himself him, stripped himself of his shoes and vest, but didn’t attempt to get ready for bed. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Leaning back against his kitchen counter, he drew in a deep breath. As he exhaled, his eyes landed on an oddly-shaped shadow in the center of his small kitchen table. It was a cactus: small, lumpy, and even to his untrained eye, a pretty ugly centerpiece. He had bought last year during one of his walks through the market with Temari on the way to their restaurant. He had pointed it out to make a joke, _is this the “beauty of the desert” that you’re always going on about?_ And she had punched him in the arm, turned up her nose, and told him that while it was ugly, the mature plants had beautiful flowers.

They had continued walking, but on his way home from her apartment that night after their ritual game, he impulsively went back to the stall and stopped to buy the little cactus. The next time his teammates came over to his apartment and found it on his table, Ino launched into an immediate tirade about how he had no taste, no style, and _if you wanted plants for your apartment why didn’t you come to me,_ while Choji just shook his head and gave Shikamaru a flat stare. The sentiment— _you’ve got it bad—_ was obvious, but Shikamaru attempted to shrug it off and told them he was looking for a low-maintenance plant that even the most incompetent gardener couldn’t manage to kill. The subject was dropped, but Ino continued to whine about it every time she was in the same room.

As Shikamaru took in the plant now, a year later, it was easier for him to admit to himself that he had bought it because Temari liked it. The half-formed plan upon purchase was to give it to her when it finally flowered, to give her a piece of the desert to keep in Konoha, but he wasn’t sure if he could ever work up the nerve. It was definitely against the rules. But it was too late for that, now.

And besides: the plant had never flowered.

* * *

The following night was Choji’s birthday party, and thus Shikamaru found himself in a crowded bar surrounded by people when all he really wanted to do was get blind drunk in his apartment, torture himself by thinking about Temari, and accept that how he was evidently a masochist who wanted to ruin his own life.

 _At least I can still drink,_ he thought to himself as he sat at the end of the bar. The constant noise of people around him laughing, shouting, and dancing were not improving his mood. He was only here out of love for his best friend, and if he was going to be forced to stay, he was going to drink to have to make it tolerable.

After three beers, Shikamaru was pleasantly buzzed. After getting roped into three rounds of shots with the birthday boy and their friends, he was solidly drunk. Three more drinks later, Shikamaru was probably the drunkest he had been in years, and was becoming increasingly agitated. The laughter of the crowd felt less like background noise and more like a direct mockery of the personal events of the last 24 hours. He decided he needed a smoke. As he stumbled through the mass of bodies, fumbling hands searching his pockets for his lighter, he was ambushed by a very loud and very drunk Ino.

She slung an arm around his shoulder and pivoted their bodies back towards the dance floor. “Where are you going, lazy? You can’t sit on the sidelines the whole time!” she warbled drunkenly in his ear. “You need to dance! It’s not a party if you don’t dance!”

Shikamaru scowled and tried to pry her arm from where it was tightening its grip around his neck. “Let me the fuck out of here Ino, I want to have a smoke! And you know I don’t fucking dance—”

“—Where’s Temari?” Ino cut in loudly over his protests. “Why don’t you dance with her, it’s not like the whole village doesn’t know you have a thing for her!”

Upon hearing Temari’s name, Shikamaru heaved Ino off of him, stumbling back as his alcohol-soaked brain struggled to keep track of his limbs.

“She isn’t fucking here, Ino,” he spat out, head swimming as he found his balance. He turned towards the door.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me, Shikamaru!” Ino screamed after him. But Shikamaru just flipped her the bird over his shoulder as he crashed through the door onto the street.

He blinked rapidly as the cool night air surrounded him, swiftly making him hyperaware of all the liquor swirling in his stomach and the feeling of his blood rushing in his ears. He was suddenly very certain that he was going to vomit, and ran for the alley before emptying the contents of his stomach by the alley wall.

The act of vomiting started to clear the cottony feeling in his head, but as he stared down at the ground, one arm braced against the wall, Shikamaru was not at all happy to be thinking more clearly. As he spat the foul taste of bile from his mouth, he was overcome with shame.

Shame for his behavior the previous day, for the things he said to the woman he loved—the true name of the emotion was easier to admit to himself when intoxicated—for how he had just exposed how raw he was truly feeling to Ino and a room full of his friends. Shame that he had thrown up in a dingy alleyway, alone at two o’clock in the morning.

He needed to get out of there before he caused himself further embarrassment. He straightened up and began walking purposefully away from the bar, towards Konoha’s main thoroughfare. Shikamaru walked and walked, never loosing speed, his mind racing as the alcohol in his system fueled a constant refrain: _get away._

Shikamaru suddenly stopped short in the middle of the street, the motion sending his head spinning as he remembered that he was still extremely drunk. He looked up at the sky, and the stars blinked at him in and out of focus as he took in his surroundings, realizing where he was. He wheeled around wildly, eyes wide, as he took in the front door of Temari’s apartment building.

 _Fuck!_ His brain supplied eloquently as his head swung around, seeking verification that he had in fact ended up in a very dangerous situation. He stumbled back a few steps, backing painfully into the wall on the opposite side of the street. His gaze immediately landed on what he knew to be the windows of her apartment: they were dark.

Sagging back against the wall, Shikamaru heaved a long sigh of relief, then slid down until his ass hit the ground, unsteady legs no longer willing to keep his drunk self up. He closed his eyes and tried to make sense of his evening. For a second, he entertained the thought of ringing the bell or throwing stones at her window like a lovesick teenager. What would Temari make of his sudden appearance at this hour of the night, just one day after he let himself see a glimpse of what they could have been like together and then promptly smashed that future to bits at their feet?

Ino would probably say it was “romantic _”,_ but Shikamaru had a feeling that Temari would probably just find it “pathetic.” And since he was extremely drunk and being very honest with himself tonight, he found it pretty pathetic too.

Heaving himself to his feet and suppressing the urge to vomit again, Shikamaru started back down the road. He resisted the urge to look back at her window, as it was time to accept what he had brought down on his own head: the door had closed between them, and it was his own doing.

* * *

When he awoke the following morning, face down and horizontal on top of his blankets in last night’s clothes, with what was possibly the worst hangover of his life, Shikamaru was dismayed to learn that he remembered every second of the previous night. Groaning, he rolled onto his back, wincing as the sun hit his eyes through the window. He thought to himself: I _deserve this._

As he dragged himself through the rest of the week, forcing himself to keep away from Temari before he added insult to injury, Shikamaru reminded himself: _I deserve this._

But he allowed himself to speak to her the day before she left, just long enough to politely wish her farewell. The honorific, which he hadn’t used when addressing her since before the war, weighed heavy in his mouth. It felt like the final nail in the coffin: one syllable marking the end of whatever it was that they had.

As he watched her walk away and disappear into the crowded village streets, he thought: _I deserve this._

* * *

The rest of the summer passed slowly. The long nights and warm weather had all of his friends dragging him out to various parties, but he was such a bad sport even by his own standards that eventually the invitations stopped coming. A month after Temari’s departure, Choji and Ino were the only ones who would come see him in his apartment, which according to Ino had become “a depression cave of man pain.” Choji was more sympathetic, however, and tried to cajole Shikamaru into talking about why he was spending all of his spare time holed up in his apartment or alone on his preferred hillside.

Shikamaru was not a person who enjoyed talking about his feelings. He was grateful to the two of them for being good friends and continuing to come around, but he couldn’t talk to them about what he was feeling when he himself couldn’t make sense of it. It was too embarrassing to reveal to Choji that he spent most of his time alone thinking about playing shogi with Temari, remembering the old in-jokes they used to share, the way she looked seated on the floor that one day, hair billowing around her face as she looked up at him in an expression that he now recognized as half wary, half hopeful.

It would be even more humiliating to admit to Choji that most of Shikamaru’s evenings were spent masturbating to the memory of the night he went to her; what she felt like in his arms, the warmth of her skin under his hands, her body pressed against him from hip to chest...

Or perhaps, the most painful admission of all: that in the inevitable shame spiral that followed these erotic memories, Shikamaru replayed his own words over and over in his mind, and every day they made less and less sense.

Temari had told him that night, in her own way, that she thought about him in the same way. Her words— _I want you, choose me—_ kept him awake at night and distracted him during the day. His responses, the more he turned them over in his head, rang hollow. Now, a month later, he was starting to believe that he wasn’t a logical think; just a coward.

* * *

On a rainy day about six weeks after Temari left the village, there was a knock at Shikamaru’s door. From his position sprawled across the couch, Shikamaru closed his eyes and willed his visitor to go away. However, the knocking picked up again a few seconds later and persisted with growing intensity and volume. Annoyed, Shikamaru dragged himself to his feet and stalked over to the door.

“What—” he growled as he flung it open, choking off his frustrated tirade when he was faced with who had come to visit.

Nara Yoshino stood on his doormat, looking up at him with a familiar mix of frustration and pity.

She briskly pushed past her son, whose surprise had left him standing motionless in the doorway. “Ino and Choji tell me that you’re having some kind of depressive episode,” she stated evenly as she took in the state of his apartment. Her lips curled into a frown as her eyes roved over the sink full of dirty dishes, the empty bottles littering several available flat surfaces, the pile of old takeout containers cluttering his kitchen table.

“I think ‘depressive episode’ is a bit dramatic—” She cut him off with a raised finger and a raised eyebrow.

“It smells terrible in here,” Yoshino declared with distaste, her nose wrinkling. “How long has it been since you cleaned?”

“I clean when I feel like it, Mom, like any other _adult_ ,” Shikamaru answered defensively, narrowing his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Yoshino was very clearly not impressed with this answer. She mirrored his stance, and fixed him with a powerful glare. The two of them fought a silent battle of wills for several long seconds; Yoshino won.

“You cannot live this way,” she decided, moving her hands to her hips. “It’s disgusting.”

Shikamaru threw himself out of the way as his mother moved with impressive speed into his kitchen.

“We start here!” she declared, rummaging in his cabinets for cleaning supplies. She pushed a sponge and a bottle of soap into her son’s hands, instructing him to start on the dirty dishes while she gathered up all the laundry. Shikamaru was left standing dumbstruck in his kitchen as his mother moved like a woman possessed around his apartment, throwing open the windows and making loud and often rude verbal assessments of the state of his “bachelor pad.” After a few moments, he sighed and turned to the sink. After a lifetime of arguments with his mother, he knew when he was fighting a losing battle.

* * *

Several hours of hard labor later, Shikamaru begrudgingly admitted to himself that his apartment looked—and smelled—much better. But his mother was obviously not ready to leave. She brought two cups of steaming tea over to his kitchen table, and gave him a look that said _you better sit down with me if you know what’s good for you._

Shikamaru lowered himself warily into the seat across from his mother, and watched her sip her drink with a calculating expression.

“You look so much like your father did at your age,” she finally said. Shikamaru shrugged; people told him this all the time, especially since his father had passed away.

Yoshino continued: “You’re acting much like he did at your age, too.” This statement was more of a surprise to her son. He looked back at her inquisitively, sat up a little straighter.

“We never told you this, but your father and I did not have the easiest time getting married. The Nara clan hated me, because despite being a respected shinobi I came from a civilian family. My parents were craftspeople—well-respected in the community, but they weren’t ninja. It was just luck of the draw that I had any chakra affinity.”

Yoshino leaned back in her chair and looked out the window, gaze softened and distant. “When we were your age, your father made his interest in me very clear, in his own way. We used to argue like hell, but I was the only woman who ever made him laugh. He was the only man who could get away with teasing me. I loved him for a long time before I knew to call it love, and I knew he felt the same way about me, but he was very conflicted by what his family would think of our relationship. After all, he was the clan heir...”

As she trailed off, she turned back to meet her son’s eyes. “He wanted to protect me, so he tried to break my heart. Told me that he didn’t want to hurt me by subjecting me to his family’s disdain, that they would never approve of us being together. That day we had an epic argument, but I finally got him to see why what he was trying to do was wrong: he never _asked_ me if I wanted to be protected from his family, never _asked_ me what I was willing to go through on his behalf. Just like you, he was hailed a genius and always thought he knew best, so he tried to make a logical decision in emotional situation.”

Yoshino smiled. “That was the night we got together, officially. I told him I was willing to fight together for acceptance into his family, and it took a lot of work and sacrifice, but we succeeded, eventually. You know the rest.”

Shikamaru was silent for a moment, fidgeting with his mug. Finally he asked quietly: “Why are you telling me this now?”

Yoshino directed a pointed state at the cactus sitting between them on the table. “I think you know.”

 _Caught._ There was no use denying it now; she had seen through him so easily. Shikamaru decided that he would never get a better sounding board for his fears, so he decided to lay all of his cards on the table.

“What if I ruined things beyond repair? We fought, and I was a coward too pathetic to apologize. Now she’s gone, and she probably never wants to speak to me again...”

His mother gave him a look that was half sympathetic, half _good-god-my-son-is-an-idiot_. “She’ll be back in a few weeks. And if you stop projecting your own fears onto her for ‘her own good,’ you might have a conversation that lasts long enough for her to tell you if she thinks you have a chance.”

Having said her piece, Yoshino stood up, smoothed out her dress, and prepared to leave. As she turned back to say goodbye at the door, she left him with some parting advice.

“I just want you to be happy, Shikamaru. Good luck.”

The sound of the door closing echoed in Shikamaru’s clean apartment. He sat at the table for a long while, his tea gone cold as the evening transitioned into night. When he finally went to bed, sleep came easier than it had in weeks.

* * *

He had another six weeks until Temari came back for the next round of diplomatic meetings. Shikamaru took Choji by surprise by inviting him out for barbeque. Choji, ever a diplomatic friend himself, didn’t ask questions and was just happy to see his friend pulling himself out of a rut. When he tried to subtly ask if this had anything to do with a certain woman, Shikamaru just cut him off with a smirk.

“I just have a little clarity, Choji. All I can do now is wait.”

His friend didn’t push, and they enjoyed their first meal together in a long time.

* * *

To pass the time, Shikamaru threw himself into his work, surprising everyone from the Hokage himself to the lowest-ranking genin messenger when he showed up to work fifteen minutes early on an ordinary Thursday. He became the hottest topic in the tower rumor mill, with people taking various bets as to the cause of his sudden change of behavior, but Shikamaru didn’t care. He spent his evenings after work on his favorite hillside, taking in his favorite weather of the year—when the heat of summer faded to the crisp air of autumn. As he lay on the hill, he thought about Temari, but now it brought him no shame; only hope.

* * *

The day finally came. Shikamaru decided not to meet her at the gate, as it would signal a return to their rules. He did not want to follow the rules any longer, so he settled in by her apartment to wait.

Despite having several weeks to plan what he was going to say to her, Shikamaru was nervous. He felt his heart beat fast as he checked his watch, noting that it was past five o’clock already. She should have arrived by now. He lit a cigarette in an attempt to calm his nerves. It wasn’t until he had smoked the cigarette almost all the way down to nothing that she appeared from around the corner.

Temari stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him; after his absence at the gate she probably did not expect to see him today. Shikamaru straightened up and discarded the cigarette before he lost his nerve. He willed himself to stay composed as she approached him warily.

She stood before him; she did not speak. Her confusion was clear.

 _It’s now or never,_ Shikamaru told himself determinedly, as he quietly instructed her to follow him down the street.

When she didn’t fall into step with him immediately, he forced himself not to panic. _She’s hurt, she doesn’t know if she should trust you, just hope that she wants to talk to you._ He was relieved when she jogged up to join him at his side. He felt her gaze on his face as they wove through the evening crowds and as he led them down the quieter street that led to the stairs to his park. After a brief hiccup, he convinced her to climb the stairs with him, and was pleased to note that she seemed calmed by the sunset, particularly beautiful on this clear night. She seemed to forget about him for a moment as she took in the view, and Shikamaru let himself drink her in after her three-month absence. Her face was warmed by the late autumn sun, the golden hour light brought out the gold of her hair.

“Is this why you brought me here?” Temari asked, turning to face him. “To see the sunset? It’s beautiful, but we do have sunsets in the desert.”

Her tone made Shikamaru smile in relief; it was almost like their old banter. Hearing it set him at ease.

“I come here to watch the clouds, when I want to avoid thinking,” he explained, tamping down on his nerves. “Come sit for a moment.”

He walked over to his favorite spot on the grass, feeling his pulse pick up as he considered the enormity of what he was about to do. He lay down on his back and turned his eyes towards the sky, feeling Temari settle on the grass nearby. He could tell she was uncomfortable, but he was reassured by her willingness to hear him out when he was acting so cryptically.

Shikamaru closed his eyes briefly as he gathered his thoughts. Automatically, his body assumed his cloud-watching position, his hands cradling his head and his right knee pointed upwards. He breathed in slowly through his nose; held it. Then let it go with a long, quiet exhale. He kept his eyes closed when he finally spoke; It was easier to get the words out without facing the distraction of her face.

“I just told you that I come here when I don’t want to think.” The words came easily, lightly. It was easy to tell the truth now that he could recognize what he truly wanted.

“After you left,” he continued, “I came here practically every day. I was very angry at you, you know. This place used to be a haven for me. A place where my mind could go completely blank. But after what we said to each other three months ago, it didn’t work anymore.” He cracked open an eye, unable to restrain his curiosity about her reaction any longer.

Her eyes were wide with surprise at his very direct address as she looked down at him from where she was kneeling by his side, but she remained silent. He saw the faintest color in her cheeks, and after a second of eye contact, she lowered her gaze to her lap. Shikamaru’s resolve was strengthened, but he closed his eye again to make it easier for both of them to hear what he would say next.

When he spoke again, his tone was quiet, contemplative: “I couldn’t stop replaying that night in my head, Temari. How you felt under my hands, the noises you made, the way your voice sounded when you said to me: _I want you_...” He trailed off here for a moment as the memory burned fresh in his mind. He felt his face heat with the raw feeling of being so vulnerable, but he powered on; he wasn’t afraid. “But more than that, I kept hearing my own words over and over again. And at first, I thought I was justified in saying them. But after a while they started to sound pretty stupid. The girl I’ve been in love with for years said she wants me and I pushed her away, for what? A notion of normalcy I thought up at fourteen and never thought to question...”

He opened his eyes as he trailed off. Temari was still looking down at her hands in her lap like they held the answers to the universe’s greatest mysteries. He decided to be as clear as possible, to cut short her emotional distress. He rose up onto his elbows and reached out to cup her chin, startling her, but she allowed him to gently tip her face up and allow their eyes to meet.

“I didn’t realize what you were doing then, Temari, when you violated our rules. And despite fantasizing about it for years, I wasn’t ready to see it play out in real life.” His thumb stroked across her cheekbone before his brain realized the intimacy of the gesture. “I regret some of what I said that night, and I bet you do too, but I’m grateful that we said them because I know clearly what to do now, even if it will be an enormous pain in the ass down the road.”

Upon letting his true feelings float free between them, Shikamaru couldn’t help but grin as he watched her expression soften. Her features were lit dramatically by the light of the setting sun: shadows were cast upon her face, and her green-blue eyes shone.

He was taken by surprise when, instead of speaking, Temari reached out and threaded her hand through his hair, echoing the way he held her that night months ago. Shikamaru’s eyes dropped instinctually to her lips as she lowered her face towards his own.

“Idiot,” she began, her voice thick with restrained emotion. “I’m glad you finally caught on.”

* * *

What followed was a more enthusiastic confirmation of Temari’s feelings than Shikamaru could have hoped for. From the passionate kiss on the hill, to the sexually charged walked back to her apartment, to the axis-tilting experience that was their lovemaking, all of the couple’s remaining doubts about the other’s feelings had been dispelled.

As he fell asleep with Temari curled around his body, her skin soft under his hand and her breath puffing rhythmically against his chest, Shikamaru laughed at how extensively he had gotten in his own way.

* * *

When he came into consciousness the next morning, Shikamaru was aware of three things. One: it was too early, barely past dawn. Two: his mouth was full of Temari’s hair. And three: they had shifted during the night, and Shikamaru was now pressed shoulder to knee against Temari’s back, and his cock was already standing at attention from the lingering memory of his dream in which she had been a starring player.

As he gently lifted his hand and started rearranging her hair out of his face, he felt the woman in front of him stir. She hummed to herself quietly, reaching her arm up and arching her back in a stretch that only served to press her ass more directly against his cock. Shikamaru slid his arm around her waist as he dropped a kiss on her shoulder.

“Good morning.” Her voice was husky with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Early,” Shikamaru mumbled against her skin, sliding his hand across her stomach as he gently ground himself against her from behind.

Temari let out a quiet huff of laughter, her hand moving to rest on top of his. “I’m shocked you’re ready to do anything at this hour,” she teased.

Shikamaru moved his mouth to the space just below her ear, where he could make out a small love bite he left last night. It tempted him, so he laved his tongue over the bruise. “I guess I just have some great inspiration,” he murmured into her ear, sliding his fingers down to find her clit as he ground against her once again.

Temari let out a small sigh as his fingers made lazy circles on her sensitive flesh, her hips arching into his touch of their own accord. Shikamaru was content to draw these sounds from her for a few minutes, experimenting with his touch to see what kinds of little noises he could bring from her lips, devoting his mouth to her neck all the while. As the minutes passed, the sounds she made rose in pitch and volume, and he brought her over the edge in an orgasm that rolled through her slowly as he gently sucked another hickey onto her smooth skin. He held her against his chest as she trembled with it, continuing to stroke her until she forced his hand away.

She turned in his arms to look at him, and he couldn’t contain a smug smile. “You said we could go again in the morning...” he said teasingly, reaching out to grasp her hips. She smiled back at him and allowed herself to move with him as he rolled onto his back, encouraging her to straddle him.

“Typical,” Temari teased back as she settled astride his waist. “Should have known last night’s energy wouldn’t last.” Shikamaru didn’t have a chance for verbal retaliation, as she punctuated her statement with a roll of her hips against his straining erection. He could feel the lingering wetness of her climax, and he was increasingly desperate to be inside her.

“Condom,” he gasped out, as she rolled her hips again. Temari smirked, presumably at how quickly he was losing his cool, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as she reached over him into the bedside table, produced a packet, and rolled the condom down his length. Balancing with her hands braced on his chest with his hands at her hips, she lowered herself onto him as they both let out a moan.

The feeling of her tight warmth around him was almost too much stimulation for Shikamaru’s brain so early in the morning. He could do nothing but watch as she began to move, her eyes sliding shut as she took her pleasure from his body. The light of the early morning shone through the gaps around the curtains, providing just enough light to make out the curves of her form her as she rode him.

As he attempted to meet her slow and deliberate pace, Shikamaru was experiencing sensory overload. Her hair was an unruly curly halo around her face, her eyes flashing at him in the dim light as she looked down on him with a face slack with pleasure. Shikamaru could only slide his hands up and down her body and hold on for dear life. His face must have been displaying the short-circuiting of his brain, because Temari suddenly held his gaze steadily as she ground her hips in a circle that had him seeing stars.

“I need you to get with the program, Shikamaru,” she laughed quietly as she leaned back, removing her hands from his chest as she sat up straight. Shikamaru followed her instinctually, rising up off of the pillow to meet her, now fully seated in his lap. Pressing his face into her neck, he wrapped one arm around her waist and another across her back to grip her shoulder, and began to move them in unison the best he could. He held her close to his body as she rose up, pulling her down as he lifted his hips as best he could to meet in a thrust that left them both gasping. He felt her arms come around his shoulders, felt the nails of one hand dig into his back as the other found purchase in his hair.

It was the most intense feeling of his life, even more intense than the night before, to be so entirely wrapped up in this woman that she dominated all of his senses. They moved together for several minutes, their limbs tangled as she sat in his lap, her quiet sighs in his ear spurring him on to slowly increase the force of his thrusts. After an indeterminate amount of time—there was only her, the world had fallen away, he didn’t know where or when he was—she pulled on his hair, forcing him back down to earth—and smiled at him.

He leaned up and kissed her hard, then, lasting only a moment as he felt the rising tide of his orgasm quickly approaching. He pulled her down onto him, forcing a cry from her lips and her nails to rake down his back. They moved together like this for a few more desperate thrusts, Shikamaru panting against her neck, until she cried out his name in ecstasy. Her arms and legs tightened around him as she found her second climax; the clench of her cunt around his cock forced Shikamaru to follow. He couldn’t hold in the loud moan that accompanied the feeling of releasing so deep inside her, and he felt her tighten her hold around him in response.

  
They stayed wrapped up in each other for a moment, breathing hard, until he pulled back to look her in the face. He brushed a sweaty lock of her bangs out of her eyes, leaning up to drop a kiss on her lips. When he pulled away, her eyes were lit with mischief, and he felt a tug on his hair and realized that she had removed his hair tie. His hair swung loose around his face as she moved off of him, a triumphant grin on her face. Shikamaru disposed of the condom and turned back to face her where she was now propped up against the pillows, stretching leisurely and contentedly.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand: 6:43 am. He climbed back into bed and drew Temari close to his body, and her hand came up and started carding through his loose hair. He closed his eyes at the sensation, pleased with this act of easy intimacy. He had almost slipped back into sleep when he heard her voice.

“Last night, you said you were in love with me,” she said quietly, continuing her gentle raking of her nails across his scalp, though his hair.

“Mmhm,” Shikamaru vocalized in lieu of a reply, leaning into her touch. He kept his eyes, closed, sensing that she wasn’t done speaking, knowing her well enough that she would probably have an easier time if he wasn’t making eye contact.

“You must know that I care very deeply for you...but I’ve never said those words to anyone before in this way. My brothers and I only tell each other we love one another when it feels like a life-or-death situation, it’s just a by-product of our upbringing.” She sighed, and he felt the exhale on his neck. “So, all I ask is that you be patient with me, and understand that I’ll get there on my own, eventually...”  
  
As she trailed off, Shikamaru tightened his hold around her waist, and drew her closer to him. Pressed close, he tangled their legs together, stroking a hand down her back in a silent confirmation that he understood what she was saying, and that she expressed her love in so many other ways.

She curled in closer, and Shikamaru could feel the tension leaving her body. The usual background noise that kept his brain occupied at all hours of the day was silent, and he felt a rare moment of peace.

* * *

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is! After another 10k words I think this story has finally reached its conclusion. Hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I've always liked the idea of these two very smart characters circling each other while totally lacking the emotional intelligence to effectively navigate their feelings. Thus the idea this story was born, and somehow ended up being over eleven thousand words!


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